Smart jewelry & accessories handmade from recycled circuit boards
http://CircuitBreakerLabs.com
http://CircuitBreakerLabs.etsy.com
The Artist
Amanda Preske has been creating by hand for as long as she can remember. After years of candlemaking, cross stitching, sewing, and silk painting, she found her love for jewelry making. Gifted a box of colorful seed beads as a teenager, she taught herself how to bead weave and slowly branched out into other forms of jewelry making, including glass fusing, enameling, stringing, metalsmithing, and resin casting. When she realized she was making more jewelry than she could possibly wear or gift, she started Beadwork by Amanda when she was 14, and began selling her work at craft shows and on Etsy.
Upon seeing the circuit boards coming from a broken computer her brother was attempting to repair, she became transfixed by the beauty and complexity found on a circuit board. As a whole, the boards are often too complex to appreciate, but on the small scale of jewelry, small portions begin to resemble subway maps, cityscapes, and weird little worlds. Captured under epoxy resin, each piece shines with its own personality. This small venture into circuit board jewelry, which started back in 2007, has since blossomed into a full time business.
Circuit Breaker Labs is intended to be a play on words and a nod to her background. Each cut into the circuit board signifies a broken circuit, so the name is quite literal. With a PhD in chemistry and a love for all things STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math), the lab is where she used to synthesize nanocrystals, and is now a busy jewelry studio.
The Work
Each piece is made from recycled circuit board. Computers, cell phones, calculators, CRT monitors, and office telephones have all been recycled into jewelry by Amanda. The circuit boards are sourced from a number of places. Most notably is at art shows and festivals, where she trades circuit boards for finished jewelry. Each board is extracted from its housing and stripped of all extraneous, tall components. Then the pieces are individually cut from the board, often using just a dremel tool and tin snips, then ground to the proper shape. Everything is thoroughly cleaned and outfitted in vintage, vintage-inspired, or recycled silver settings. Some pieces are made with one of a kind settings that Amanda hand solders together. Every piece is finished with domed epoxy resin. The resin acts as a lens and magnifies the circuit board underneath, creating a beautiful way to view the circuit board. Amanda creates a range of pieces for men and women, including necklaces, bracelets, earrings, cufflinks, tie bars, and a whole host of other neat products. Amanda makes everything in her Rochester, NY studio.
